Cutting Through The Crap

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Beyond Outrage, Beyond Hope

This might be too much for me. Most literally, it makes me physically ill. Trying to put into words the depth of my visceral reaction may be impossible. It's simply the most despicable, horrifying, destructive, and fundamentally threatening thing going on in the body politic of the US. It's beyond the lying of Fox "news;" it's beyond the formless and factless rage of the tea bag people. This even overshadows, as a threat to everything we are as a country, the abuse of Senate rules by the Republicans that has all but ground governance to halt. It is worse than (although it's abetted by) the dereliction of duty of most of our news media. This is, unarguably, evidence of the beginning of the end. Unless even those uselessly enraged and idea-disencumbered right wingers wake up and say, enough. Enough. We are a country of laws, that values laws, whose legal system protects us all. Us all. All of us. Laws.

ENOUGH.

I refer to the demon spawn of Dick Cheney. I refer to her horrible group of America haters. I refer to the fact that there are people out there -- marinating in putrefaction, as expected, on Fox "news" but also, evidently, in all walks of life (using the term loosely) -- who don't see the danger. The disease.

This person, this evil thing, this smirking embodiment of blind hatred and the unapologetic disseminator of desperate lies, has declared revenge on lawyers assigned to defend accused terrorists in American courts. This damned individual, who most surely hasn't the foggiest appreciation of the Constitution or the laws that have stemmed from it, who would destroy the foundations of a legal system that has been the model for most of the civilized world, who is regularly given air time when she should, in fact, be deprived of air (at least the kind that wafts outside of damp and moldy basements), would happily -- because it makes her famous, and garners laudatory grime from the scum that love her, and because she's desperately trying to keep her felonious father out of jail -- ruin the lives of people doing the bidding of that very Constitution which she ignores so thoroughly. (I can't find the will directly to link to her ad, but there's a link within the previous one.) What a horrible, fraudulent, venal excuse for a human being.

Well, I guess those were words; but really, I have no words. This is as low as it gets; were she and her bootlickers to get their way, we'd no longer be a country of laws. We'd no longer be a country at all.

It's so obvious. And yet, there she is, a darling of much of the media, mostly -- but not limited to -- Fox "news" and the radio screamers. And there are listeners who give credence to her, and who (you can read it in comments on various sources that have covered it, but I don't recommend it), in the most despicable of language, filled with the sort of glee that only springs from pure evil (and I don't even believe in such a thing), agree with her. It's not just disheartening; it's not just depressing; it's not just dismaying. It's so far beyond any of those that I can't express it. The words stick somewhere near my diaphragm; they close my throat. Because it means we are so far from reason in parts of this country that there remains no basis for hoping we can get beyond where we are. We shall not overcome. It's too potent, it's too attractive to those that prefer hatred to hope, in whom it's simply not part of their makeup to think beyond their own sad fears and selfishness, to whom the idea of democracy in all its ramifications is as foreign as breathing underwater.

Times are tough. Right wingers, evidently, aren't. They talked tough, oh yes. But they got their deferments. And now, in the heat of great need, they have melted. Called upon by the times to rise to new heights, to honor what has served us through wars and depressions, they have sunk to new lows, descended into the mongering of fear and hate and the wholesale peddling of lies. And they're the ones that claim the mantle of patriotism, even as they reject the fundament of what has -- until now -- made us great. As they destroy us from the inside, deliberately, thoroughly.

Patriots.

I'd laugh, if I could.

It's come to this. When tested, we have failed. Cowed by people in caves, and by the premeditated and self-serving terrorizing of our populus by politicians like the Cheneys and virtually all Congressional Republicans, and the RWS™, we are on the verge of complete capitulation to fear, of renunciation of the rule of law and democracy. At a time when we are most in need of reason, we get this. We fall upon ourselves. We grovel in a level of discourse so low that the founding fathers would fail to recognize what they have wrought. One of the most brilliant of whom, as we know, defended British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre.

How pathetic these distorters of reality have become, how craven in the face of danger, how they recoil from the challenge of real problems that need real solutions. How quickly they shrink from the hard work of democracy. How they cheerlead and stoke anger. How far down people such as Liz Cheney have dragged us, septic, into the cesspool in which they live, when we most need to lift ourselves up; how easily such thoughts as hers take hold and, like the slime that they are, spread over us all, suffocating, eating our bones. And, it seems, we barely notice.

See? I have no words. None, at any rate, that convey convincingly and sanely the awfulness of these people. They will destroy us. And, even as we breathe our last, they'll find someone else on whom to blame it.

Is there anyone on the right willing to speak out? Anyone who calls him- or herself a true conservative willing to condemn Liz Cheney and the horseshit she rode in on?

Anyone?

And while you're at it, anyone on the right want to disagree with this soulless succubus that, even as he keeps arresting terrorists at a greater rate than her putrid progenitor, President Obama isn't serious about terrorism?

Anyone?

[Update, 3/5: Well, well, a couple of conservatives (none who troll these waters, of course) have spoken up. One even went so far as to use the word "unfortunate."]

As much as I agree with this, the only possible beacon of light in what is currently an utterly despondent political climate is the fact that we have an unabashed intellectual in the position of power. We currently hold the upper hand in the current battle of pandering to the lowest common denominator vs. striving to be elite.

The louder they scream, the more we are reminded that they lost and are unable to deal with it. Have faith that my generation (born in late 80s) can see through this and its honestly pretty pathetic.

Thanks, Marshall. It is up to people like you, that's for sure. I hope there are enough of you.

You are right about Obama; which makes it even more tragic: having the right person in the office at the right time, and letting the opportunity for actual problem solving be denied by this hyperpartisan and insane bunch of idiots...

Marshall, No Offense, but your generation sucks Donkey Balls.My daughters were born in the 90's and LOVE Sarah Palin, the Bushes, and America too. Can't wait till the oldest gets to vote in 0-12... And not to be an A-hole, but its y'alls own party who's blocking the Healthcare Abortion.Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Here are some nice tidbits from a meeting of RNC fundraisers and the strategy presented for luring the flies into the maw of the republican spider.

The presentation was delivered by RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart to top donors and fundraisers at a party retreat in Boca Grande, Florida on February 18, a source at the gathering said.

The small donors who are the targets of direct marketing are described under the heading “Visceral Giving.” Their motivations are listed as “fear;” “Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration;” and “Reactionary.”

Major donors, by contrast, are treated in a column headed “Calculated Giving.”

Their motivations include: “Peer to Peer Pressure”; “access”; and “Ego-Driven.” See it all at:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/33866.html

Let's vote on this guys:Is Drekman raising his daughters to be "Ego Driven": or will he bludgeon them into being fear driven reactionaries - like him?

I vote the latter because he doesn't have the bucks to buy access.

So relax Drekman, you will never out- Cheeny, Cheeny!

The report is a smoking gun Drekman, pointed right at your empty head. It confirms what we have all known about you for a long time. I must say though, that for once, my contempt for you is only exceeded by that I feel for The RNC.

Nice, jd: exactly what I expected from you. Missing the point entirely, going into pre-programmed mode, and pointing fingers everywhere.

The question is not about guilt or innocence. Not even that of the Dick. It's about an attack on lawyers who defended terrorists, as if they themselves are terrorist sympathizers, as opposed to people doing what the law requires.

You can't see that, and never will. So you resort to your usual off-point hackery which only goes to demonstrate the danger to which I point.

And, yes, I most certainly do consider the Dick to be felonious. In fact, he's admitted it. The difference between you and me, evidently, is that I believe he deserves a trial, and I wouldn't attack his lawyer. Who knows? A guy who represented him might some day turn up to defend gay marriage.

And, no, I didn't wish Liz dead; only that she be kept in a basement. Let's be precise, okay?

Also, as I've said several times, I haven't watched Olbermann in a year or so; I don't need that sort of self-affirmation. But I do look at clips of Maddow, when they interest me. She happens base her opinions on fact, a rarity; and she gives real opposing views a chance to be heard. Unique.

By the way, the Constitution has been interpreted. You know, by that supremey courty thing. About depriving people of rights. And recently, too.

Hate is okay? Sure. Humans have a way of doing that. It's a matter of how you handle it. Might be a little too subtle for you. Go lie down.

For The Sake of My Sanity

Some will know me from my other blog, "Surgeonsblog." Of late I've given over to frothing at the mouth as the world descends into stupidity, and our politics and our citizens seem, in numbers enough to be meaningful, unable to see it. So for now I'm leaving surgery writing behind, if for no other reason than to defuse and diffuse my unrelenting sense of doom, and with no expectation of making a difference. These are things that, to me, are obvious. Except that, apparently, they aren't.

RWS™

RWS™: For those who drop by here in the middle, and wonder what it means: it's my shorthand for Right Wing Screamers, which includes such a long list it's tiresome to type it. (I distinguish these blowhards from thoughtful conservatives, of whom I sort of take it on faith that there must still be some.) You know who I mean: Palin, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Breitbart (RIP), Malkin, Savage, Levin, Ingraham, Doocey (more of a drooler than a screamer), Hewitt, Goldberg, Gingrich, Kristol, Scarborough (+/-), Bachmann, Inhofe, Bond, Broun, Boehner, Kelley, Santorum, Cain. To name but a few. Behold them in their unrepentant disregard for reality: the RWS™

My Better Self

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About Me

I'm a mostly retired general surgeon. With my surgical blog, my intention is to inform, entertain, and possibly educate the reader about surgery, and about the life and loves of a surgeon: this one, anyway. Don't know what I'm thinking, doing a political blog, too.
In an amazing coincidence, I've also written a book, "Cutting Remarks; Insights and Recollections of a Surgeon." It's about my surgical training in San Francisco in the 1970s, aimed at the lay reader with the goal of entertaining with good stories, informing with understandable details of surgical anatomy, procedures, and diseases. Knowing you, I bet you'd enjoy it. In fact, if you like Surgeonsblog, you'll absolutely love the book!